Waltz Into Darkness (4 page)

She
was no more than in her early twenties, and though her size might
have lent her added youth, the illusion had very little to subtract
from the reality. Her skin was that of a young girl, and her eyes
were the innocent, trustful eyes of a child.

Tight-spun
golden curls clung to her head like a field of daisies, rebelling all
but successfully at the conventional coiffure she tried to impose
upon them. They took to the ubiquitous psyche-knot at the back only
with the aid of forceful pins, and at the front resisted the
forehead-fringe altogether, fuming about' like topaz sea spray.

She
held herself in that forward-inclination that was de rigueur, known
as the "Grecian bend." Her dress was of the fashion as it
then was, and had been for some years. Fitting tightly as a sheath
fits a furled umbrella, it had a center panel, drawn and gathered
toward the back to give the appearance of an apron or a bib
superimposed upon the rest, and at the back puffed into a swollen
protuberance of bows and folds, artfully sustained by a wired
foundation; this was the stylish bustle, without which a woman's
posterior would have appeared indecently sleek. As soon expose the
insteps or--reckless thought 1--the ankles as allow the sitting-part
to remain flat.

A
small hat of heliotrope straw, as flat as and no bigger than a man's
palm, perched atop the golden curls, roguishly trying to reach down
toward one eyebrow, the left, without there being enough of it to do
so and still stay atop her head.

Amethyst-splinters
twinkled in the tiny holes pierced through the lobes of her miniature
and completely uncovered ears, and a slender ribbon of heliotrope
velvet girded her throat. A parasol of heliotrope organdy, of
scarcely greater diameter than a soup plate and of the consistency of
mist, hovered aloft at the end of an elongated stick, like an errant
violet halo. Upon the ground to one side of her sat a small gilt
birdcage, its-lower portion swathed in a flannel cloth, the dome left
open to expose its flitting bright-yellow occupant.

He
looked at her hand, he looked at his own shoulder, so unsure was he
the touch had come from her; so unsure was he as to the reason for
such a touch. Slowly his hat came off, was held at questioning height
above his scalp.

The
compressed mouth curved in winsome smile. "You don't know me, do
you, Mr. Durand ?"

He
shook his head slightly.

The
smile notched a dimple; rose to her eyes. "I'm Julia, Louis. May
I call you Louis?"

His
hat fell from his fingers to the ground, and rolled once about, for
the length of half its brim. He bent and retrieved it, but only with
his arm and shoulder; his face never once quited hers, as though held
to it by an unbreakable magnetic current.

"But
no-- How can--?"

"Julia
Russell," she insisted, still smiling.

"But
no-- You can't--" he kept dismembering words.

Her
brows arched. The smile expired compassionately. "It was unkind
of me to do this, wasn't it?"

"But--the
picture--dark hair--"

"That
was my aunt's I sent instead." She shook her head in belated
compunction. She lowered the parasol, closed it with a little plop.
With the point of its stick she began to trace cabalistic designs in
the dust. She dropped her eyes and watched what she was doing with an
air of sadness. "Oh, I shouldn't have, I know that now. But at
the time, it didn't seem to matter so much, we hadn't become serious
yet. I thought it was just a correspondence. Then many times since, I
wanted to send the right one in its place, to tell you-- And the
longer I waited, the less courage I had. Fearing I'd--I'd lose you
altogether in that way. It preyed on my mind more and more, and yet,
the closer the time drew-- At the very last moment, I was already
aboard the boat, and I wanted to turn around and go back. Bertha
prevailed upon me to-to continue down here. My sister, you know."

"I
know," he nodded, still dazed.

"The
last thing she said to me, just before I left, was, 'He'll forgive
you. He'll understand you meant no harm.' But during the entire trip
down, how bitterly I repented my--my frivolity." Her head all
but hung, and she caught at her mouth, gnawing at it with her small
white teeth.

"I
can't believe-I can't believe--" was all he could keep
stammering.

She
was an image of lovely penitence, tracing her parasol-stick about on
the ground, shyly waiting for forgiveness.

"But
so much younger--" he marveled. "So much lovelier even
than--"

"That
too entered into it," she murmured. "So many men become
smitten with just a pretty face. I wanted our feeling to go deeper
than that. To last longer. To be more secure. I wanted you to care
for me, if you did care, because of--well, the things I wrote you,
the sort of mind I displayed, the sort of person I really was, rather
than because of a flibbertigibbet's photograph. I thought perhaps if
I gave myself every possible disadvantage at the beginning, of
appearance and age and so forth, then there would be that much less
danger later, of its being just a passing fancy. In other words, I
put the obstacles at the beginning, rather than have them at the
end."

How
sensible she was, he discovered to himself, how level-minded, in
addition to all her external attractions. Why, there were the
components here of a paragon.

"How
many times I tried to write you the truth, you'll never know,"
she went on contritely. "And each time my courage would fail. I
was afraid I would only succeed in alienating you entirely, from a
person who, by her own admission, had been guilty of falsehood. I
couldn't trust such a thing to cold paper" She gestured
charmingly with one hand. "And now you see me, and now you know.
The worst."

"The
worst," he protested strenuously. "But you," he went
on after a moment, still amazed, "but you, knowing all along
what I did not know until now, that I was so much--well,
considerably, older than you. And yet--"

She
dropped her eyes, as if in additional confession. "Perhaps that
may have been one of your principal attractions, who knows? I have,
since as far back as I can remember, been capable of--shall I say,
romantic feelings, the proper degree of emotion or admiration--only
toward men older than myself. Boys of my own age have never
interested me. I don't know what to attribute it to. All the women in
my family have been like that. My mother was married at fifteen, and
my father was at the time well over forty. The mere fact that you
were thirty-six, was what first--" With maidenly seemliness,
she forebore to finish it.

He
kept devouring her with his eyes, still incredulous.

"Are
you disappointed ?" she asked timidly.

"How
can you ask that?" he exclaimed.

"Am
I forgiven ?" was the next faltering question.

"It
was a lovely deception," he said with warmth of feeling. "I
don't think there's been a lovelier one ever committed."

He
smiled, and her smile, still somewhat abashed, answered his own.

"But
now I will have to get used to you all over again. Grow to know you
all over again. That was a false start," he said cheerfully.

She
turned her head aside and mutely half-hid it against her own
shoulder. And yet even this gesture, which might have seemed maudlin
or revoltingly saccharine in others, she managed to carry off
successfully, making it appear no more than a playful parody while at
the same time deftly conveying its original intent of rebuked
coyness.

He
grinned.

She
turned her face toward him again. "Are your plans, your, er,
intentions, altered?"

"Are
yours?"

"I'm
here,"she said with the utmost simplicity, grave now.

He
studied her a moment longer, absorbing her charm. Then suddenly, with
new-found daring, he came to a decision. "Would it make you feel
better, would it ease your mind of any lingering discomfort," he
blurted out, "if I were to make a confession to you on my own
part?"

"You
?" she said surprised.

"I--I
no more told you the entire truth than you told me," he rushed
on.

"But--but
I see you quite as you said you were, quite as your picture described
you--"

"It
isn't that, it's something else. I too perhaps felt just as you did,
that I wanted you to like me, to accept my offer, solely on the
strength of the sort of man I was in myself. For myself alone, in
other words."

"But
I see that, and I do," she said blankly. "I don't
understand."

"You
will in a moment," he promised her, almost eagerly. "Now I
must confess to you that I'm not a clerk in a coffee-import house."

Her
face betrayed no sign other than politely interested incomprehension.

"That
I haven't a thousand dollars put aside, to--to start us off."

No
sign. No sign of crestf all or of frustrated avarice. He was watching
her intently. A slow smile of indulgence, of absolution granted,
overspread her features before he had spoken next. Well before he
had spoken next. He gave it time.

"No,
I own a coffee-import house, instead."

No
sign. Only that slightly forced smile, such as women give in
listening to details of a man's business, when it doesn't interest
them in the slightest but they are trying to be polite.

"No,
I have closer to a hundred thousand dollars."

He
waited for her to say something. She didn't. She, on the contrary,
seemed to be waiting for him to continue. As if the subject had been
so arid, and barren of import, to her, that she did not realize the
climax had already been reached.

"Well,
that's my confession," he said somewhat lamely.

"Oh,"
she said, as if brought up short. "Oh, was that it? You mean--"
She fluttered her hand with vague helplessness. "--about your
business, and money matters--" She brought two fingers to her
mouth, and crossed it with their tips. Stifling a yawn that, without
the gesture of concealment, he would not have detected in the first
place. "There are two things I have no head for," she
admitted. "One is politics, the other is business, money
matters."

"But
you do forgive me?" he persisted. Conscious at the same time of
a fierce inward joy, that was almost exultation; as when one has
encountered a perfection of attitude, at long last, and almost by
chance, that was scarcely to be hoped for.

She
laughed outright this time, with a glint of mischief, as if he were
giving her more credit than was due her. "If you must be
forgiven, you're forgiven," she relented. "But since I paid
no attention whatever to the passages in your letters that dealt with
that, in the first place, why, you're asking forgiveness for a fault
I was not aware, until now, of your having committed. Take it, then,
though I'm not sure what it's for."

He
stared at her with a new intentness, that went deeper than before; as
if finding her as utterly charming within as she was at first sight
without.

Their
shadows were growing longer, and they were all but alone now on the
pier. He glanced around him as if reluctantly awakening to their
surroundings. "It's getting late, and I'm keeping you standing
here," he said in a reminder that was more dutiful than honest,
for it might mean their separation, for all he knew.

"You
make me forget the time," she admitted, her eyes never leaving
his face. "Is that a bad omen or a good? You even make me forget
my predicament: half ashore and half still on the boat. I must soon
become the one or the other."

"That's
soon taken care of," he said, leaning forward eagerly, "if
I have your own consent."

"Isn't
yours necessary too ?" she said archly.

"It's
given, it's given." 'He was almost breathless with haste to
convince her.

She
was in no hurry, now that he was. "I don't know," she said,
lifting the point of her parasol, then dropping it again, then
lifting it once more, in an uncertainty that he found excruciating.
"If you had not seemed satisfied, if you had looked askance at
the deceiver that you found me to be, I intended going back onto the
boat and remaining aboard till she set out on the return trip to St.
Louis. Don't you think that might still be the wiser--"